‘Thus Ḥājjī Khalīfa, the Ottoman bibliographer of the eleventh/seventeenth century, introduces his listing of books contained within the genre of exegetical literature connected to the Qur'ān entitled asbāb al-nuzūl. That account of the genre has barely been exceeded in more recent scholarship. Ignaz Goldziher in his Die Richtungen der islamischen Koranauslegung finds occasion only once to mention the ‘classic’ work of the type, that by al-Wāḥidī (d. 468/1075), and devotes no further space to consideration of the literature. Régis Blachère in his Introduction au Coran deals with the genre in a brief footnote while Bell/Watt's Introduction to the Qur'ān confines comment to a dozen or so lines. The standard tome of scholarship, Nöldeke/Schwally, Geschichte des Qorāns, II: Die Sammlung des Qorāns, gives the longest treatment known, extending for almost two pages of text. The introduction to the section is worthy of quotation:Die unter dem Namen Asbüb al-nuzūl gehenden Werke unterscheiden sich von den Kommentaren dadurch, dass sie nur das auf Veranlassung der Offenbarungen bezüigliche Material enthalten. Da dieses aber den religionsgeschichtlich wie literargeschichtlich wichtigsten Teil der Kommentare ausmacht und hier, alles stö:renden Beiwerkes entkleidet, besonders leicht zu übersehen ist, begreift es sich leicht, wie gross der Wert dieser Bücher für die Forschung ist. Die Muslime haben, wie es scheint, weniger Verständnis dafür gehabt, sonst würde die Zahl der einschlägigen Werke, von denen wir Kunde haben, nicht so gering sein.

The method of editing Sumerian literary texts has been the subject of heated debate in recent years. It used to be that Sumerian text editions followed the practice of classical philologists, giving the text with an apparatus criticus of manuscript variants, but this method has an inherent flaw: the editor must either choose to use as his main text an ‘eclectic text’ combining the best readings of all the manuscripts, or select one manuscript as the best version. Moreover, although the apparatus may reveal manuscript variants, it often does not inform the reader of how much of any one line is preserved in any one text. Since Sumerian literary texts may show a considerable number of variants between duplicates, the Partitur format has been proposed and utilized, in which every line of every manuscript is given in full, although the system has been opposed on grounds of waste of space.

For too long study of ancient Near Eastern representational art and study of possibly related texts have been entirely separate disciplines, the one a branch of archaeology, the other of philology. This accounts for the very scanty results obtained and their frequently questionable character. In the case of Classical Greece and Rome art historians ordinarily command Greek and Latin so as to use written sources at first hand, but Near Eastern archaeologists have commonly been illiterate in their fields of study, while philologists often have limited knowledge of art and use that very amateurishly. Thus it is an occasion for rejoicing that a serious attempt has just been made on some very difficult material from Syria and Anatolia, and that one major break-through has resulted which opens up prospects of fuller understanding of certain aspects of ancient art. The author, E. Williams-Forte, is primarily an art historian with a speciality in ancient Near Eastern seals, and she has taken an interest in Ugaritic to be able to exploit that material. Her Columbia Ph.D. thesis: Mythic cycles: the iconography of the gods of water and weather in Syria and Anatolia during the Middle Bronze Age (ca. 2000–1600 B.C.) has not been published, but a lengthy article derived from parts of it has recently appeared. This starts from the tree and snake in the garden of Eden and investigates their possible Canaanite background. The original observation of major importance is that the storm god of Syria and Anatolia of the first half of the second millennium B.C., Anatolian Tarhunna, Syrian Hadad or Baal, Mesopotamian Adad, occasionally holds up a plant, branch or tree as a symbol.

Modern scholarship dealing with the history of Arabic grammar has almost entirely neglected serious consideration of the possibility that during the very early period of the Iraqi grammatical schools, a Medinese centre of that science was a living fact. I believe that the data collected by some scholars, including myself, will now allow the conclusion that such a school really existed and probably disappeared during the first century of the 'Abbāsid regime. First, the few accounts of eighth-century Medinese grammarians in modern works will be surveyed, then the available material will be carefully studied and evaluated.

In an article published un Vol. XLIII (1980) of BSOAS I reported the identification of the Ethiopic version of the Lives of Ezekiel and Daniel, and I there presented the text and an annotated translation of these two short pieces, which belong in the pseudepigraphic work known as the Lives of the Prophets. A substantial further portion of the Ethiopic version of this work was subsequently identified by MR. Roger Cowley in a manuscript in the Bibliothèque Nationale, and he very kindly drew this to my attention. My purpose in this article is to publish the text and a translation of this new material. Mr. Cowley has also identified a fragmentary Ethiopic text containing a Life of Job and the beginning of a Life of Moses. I hope to consider this text on a future occasion and would merely obserce here that its contents are different in character from those of the work that is conventionally known as the Lives of the Prophets. I would like to record here my very grateful thanks to Mr. Cowley for his kindness in informing me of the existence of both these texts.

The story of the exegesis of Q. 2: 106 cannot be told briefly, on account of the quite appaling degree of muddle which has bedevilled the Muslim discusions of this verse. The greatest imaginable confusion regins as the definition of the term naskh and as to its supposed meaning(s). For that reason, it may be convenient first to set out the following formulae which represent the classical theories of naksh. There are, in fact, two such theories.

Scholars conversant with the history of the Yogācāra/Vijñnavāda school are familiar with the names of Vasubandhu and his renowned commentator, Sthiramati; the Buddhist logicians Dignāga and Dharmakīrti, who are also associated with that school, are equally well known for their scholastic achievements. A later commentator important in both schools is Vinītadeva (c. 645–715), who has received a great deal of attention in recent years. No less than a dozen of his commentaries, most of them called ṭīkās, are preserved in Tibetan translation. Sylvain Levi's publication in 1925 of Sthiramati's Triṃśikāvijñaptibhāṣya first aroused scholarly interest in Vinītadeva's commentaries. The eminent buddhologist, Theodore Stcherbatsky, was probably the first scholar to study Vinītadeva's work in depth; Stcherbatsky utilized the Tibetan translation of Vinītadeva's Nyāyabinduṭīkā; in his pioneering translation of the Nyāyabindu which appeared in 1930 in his massive two-volume publication, Buddhist logic. The first complete translation of the Tibetan rendering of two of Vinītadeva's ṭīkās, namely, the Viṃśatikā-ṭikā and the Triṃśikā-ṭīkā. was undertaken by Yamaguchi Susumu and Nozawa Josho, respectively; this appeared in Japanese in 1953. More recently, in 1971, M. Gangopadhyaya published a Sanskrit reconstruction with English translation of Vinītadeva's Nyāyabindu-Ṡīkā. A still more recent work appears in the 1975 Ph.D. thesis of Dr. Leslie Kawamura of the University of Saskatchewan.

The Sabaic rock inscription published by A. Jamme under the siglum Ja 1028, from a Location at Bi'r Ḥimā, 85 km. north-east of Najrān, is among the most important documents that we have for the history of Yemen in the period beford Islam. Attention has hitherto been mainly centred on exploiting its historical data; less notice has been accorded to the detailed linguistic (and specially syntactic) features, which are my topic here.

While the status of the offspring of illicit intercourse has long attracted the interest of Muslim scholars, it is a particularly significant—and problematic—issue within Imāmī Shī'ism. The problem arises from the way in which the Imāmīs view their place in the universe. A considerable body of traditions characterizes the Imāmīs as a breed apart, created of a heavenly substance and combining pure origins (nasab) with impeccable moral qualities. At the same time, there are other Imāmī traditions which portray the offspring of illicit intercourse—usually called walad zinā (=w.z.) —as combining impure origins with moral turpitude. The ineluctable conclusion to be drawn from these two sets of traditions is that ‘an Imāmī w.z.’ is a logical absurdity. Now it is a fact that Imāmī lawyers discuss at some lenght the status of the w.z. in this world, while Imāmī theologians ponder his fate in the next; an analysis of their views forms the bulk of this paper. As long as the w.z. is not an Imāmī, a discussion of his legal and salvation statuses presents no insurmountable problem; but what if he is, Imāmī tradition notwithstanding? The final section of this paper consists of an attempt to trace the answers provided to this question.

The attitude of the early Islamic state towards figurative representations is often cited as a source contributing to the establishment of officially-supported iconoclasm within the Byzantine Empire in A.D. 726. Islam has generally adopted a position opposed to the representational in secular art, and the exclusion of all figurative motifs from Islamic religious art is clear from the first, yet this attitude is not necessarily to be regarded as intrinsically iconoclastic in the true sense of the word; indeed, outside Arabia itself, the only evidence of iconoclasm until the fall of the Umayyad Caliphate in 132/750 is confined to the well-known attack on images and statues carried out on the orders of Yazīd II. b. ‘Abd al-Malik (101–105/720–724). This much discussed outbreak of iconoclasm is well documented by Islamic and Christian sources, but the very fact that it is so specifically associated with Yazīd's Caliphate suggests that it was considered unusual at the time. Although Christian sources carefully record the difficulties of their communities under the Umayyads, the absence of references to image-breaking under Caliphs before Yazīd implies that his action was a rarity worthy of comment: under normal circumstances, it would seem the Muslims left the Christians to use icons and representations or not, as they wished.

Islamic metalwork has in recent years been the subject of several important new publications. James W. Allan has written a lavishly illustrated guide to a recently acquired private collection whose pieces attest to the high quality of objects available to the discriminating collector. The 27 pieces span the variety of wares produced in the medieval Islamic world: bowls, ewers, candlesticks, inkwells, incense burners, and other objects produced in Egypt, Syria, the Jazira, Iran, and India from the tenth to the seventeenth century. Multiple photographs in both colour and black and white accompany a lengthy discussion of each piece. In the introduction the author offers a brief summary of the Islamic metalware tradition (its origins, expansion, and decline) and discusses the symbolism inherent in its decoration, particularly the imagery of light and darkness and the sun.

In ch.127 of the Shih chi, the chapter on the ‘Diviners’, we find a line cited from ch. 01 of the Lao tzu, Tao te ching as follows: ‘the nameless is the beginning of the myriad creatures’. As nearly everyone who has any familiarity with the text will recognize, this is a variation from the line as it is now konwn from the Lao tzu text itself, where we have ‘the nameless, the beginning of Heaven and Earth ’, and the Shih chi has been looked upon as the purveyor of sloppy and careless scholarship for nearly tow millennia. With the discovery about ten years ago of the Ma wang tui (abbreviated MWT) silk manuscripts of the Lao tzu dating from around 200 B.C. we are able to see that thisShih chi rendering of the line was neither sloppy nor careless, because in fact it matches in its essential features the MWT version, both the A and B manuscripts of which have Given the evidence of the MWT MSS coupled with the Shih chi form of the line we are inclined to suppose that this was the prevalent Han version of the text, and that the form with the instead of is a later innovation. I will not go into the philosophical significance of the substitution of the former for the latter here, save to say that it is clear that the scope of ch. 01 with ‘myriad creatures’ in this line is restricted to considerations of the terrestrial domain alone, whereas the introduction of the expression ‘Heaven and Earth’ expande the scope to matters terrestrial and celestial both, and the relation between the two. This is a shift of no small consequence and deserves the attention of scholars well versed in the details of Han and Weichin speculative thought.

The Grand Council (Chün-chi ch'u ) of the Ch'ing dynasty was an efficient, autocratic institution. It operated under direct imperial supervision, outside the regular administrative channels, performing its function in swift and confidential ways. Its operations enabled the Ch'ing rulers to expand their powers, strengthen their control and, most important, perpetuate their autocratic rules. Because of its versatile performance, the Grand Council enjoyed the monarch's trust, and a long existance.

In his Dictionary of Khotan Saka (p. 377), Bailey has the following entry: ‘vara- “door?”’ with the following comment: ‘possibly vara- “door” from var- “to close, shut”; or a dialectal v- < dv- would permit connexion with dvar-, Av dvar∂m, dvar∂ “gate” (…) Note Tumshuq Saka vitana “a second time” with vi- < dvi-.' Bailey's suggestion that this vara- means door, is certainly correct. The Passage in question (KT, III, 124) is quoted below.

One obstacle which confronts any historian interested in reconstructing the history of the Bētä Esra'ēl (Fälasha) of Ethiopia is the comparative scarcity of reliable historical sources. References to the Bētä Esra'ēl in Ge'ez chronicles and gädlat are all too rare, while those in Hebrew generally lack historical value. The scattered mentions of the Fälasha in other languages prior to the nineteenth century are few and limited in scope. In light of this situation, any new source, no matter how brief, is deserving of attention and study.

The text-historical problems surrounding the medical works attributed to Vāgbhaṭa are well known and have been excellently outlined by Vogel (1965: introduction) and again briefly by Meulenbeld (1974: 423–5). From the published colophons of both the Aṣṭāṅgasaṅgraha (As.) and the Aṣṭāṅgahṛdayasaṃhitā (Ah.) we learn that Vāgbhaṭa was the son of Siṃhagupta. This is stated again in the text of the As. (VI.50, end) where it is further stated that the author's grandfather was also called Vāgbhaṭa, and was also a doctor. We are in addition told that the author was born in the Sindhu region and that his teachers were Avalokita and, to a greater extent, his father Siṃhagupta. Thus we have the following family tree.

Voici une dizaine d'années encore, bien peu de travaux avaient été consacrés à la poésie en Mauritanie ou du moins au ġne, la poésie en dialecte hassāniyya. Nous n'avons toujours pas I'équivalent pour le ġne du fameux al-Wasīt que le mauritanien Sid Ahmed Ould Alamīn publia en Egypte au début du siècle et qui comporte une anthologie du ši'r, la poésie mauritanienne en arabe classique. Cependant, ces dernières années, beaucoup de poésies dialectales ont été recueillies et transcrites, quelques-unes sont publiées, d'autres devraient I'être ou ont fait I'objet de mémoires À I'École Normale Supérieure de Nouakchott (cf. bibliographic).

The tercentenary year of the second siege of Vienna by the Turks has seen the first-fruits of a long-planned venture, the publication in full of the Ottoman documents preserved in the Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv. This first part presents, in facsimile and with full transcription and translation, the texts of 36 documents issued in the name of Süleymān the Magnificent (1520–66), one being addressed to Charles V as ‘King of Spain’, 28 to Ferdinand I as ‘King of Austria’ and later as Emperor, and seven to Ferdinand's son and successor, the Emperor Maximilian. The earliest, a remarkably splendid fragment, is the beginning of a fetḥnāme, probably sent from Baghdad in December 1534 to report victories in Persia to Ferdinand as being (ostensibly) a friendly neighbour after the conclusion of peace the previous year; nos. 2–8 relate to negotiations during the war-years 1541–7; nos. 9–15, mainly recriminations over frontier skirmishes but with another fine fetḥnāme (no. 11) of 1549, belong to the brief period of uneasy peace; nos. 16–27 concern peace-feelers and embassies during the war-years 1551–62, no. 25 being the 'ahdnāme; a main topic of the remainder is the tribute, while no. 32 is the renewal of the 'ahdnāme of 1562 in favour of the new emperor Maximilian.

Most commonly it is presented as a list of beneficial psychic characteristics (kuśala dharma) or simply psychic characteristics (dharma). Sometimes practising the items of this list is stated to be a precondition for liberation from the intoxicants (āśrava). Or else the list is said to constitute the ‘cultivation of the road’ (mārgabhāvanā). In a few instances the items of the list are characterized as ‘jewels’ (ratna). This characterization occurs where doctrine and discipline (dharmavinaya) are compared with the ocean, and finds its justification in this comparison.

Navarātri (Tam. Navarāttiri) is one of the most popular and important annual festivals in the south Indian city of Madurai. The same is true elsewhere in the state and, in somewhat different forms, the festival is also popular in many other regions of India, notably Bengal (where it is known as Durgā Pūjā) and Karnataka (where it is called Dasarā). Navarātri means ‘nine nights’ and throughout India the festival is celebrated on the first nine lunar days (tithi) of the bright fortnight (i.e. the fortnight ending on full moon) of the lunar month of āśvina. In the Tamil calendar, however, the year is divided into twelve solar months and Navarātri is said to occupy the nine lunar days beginning with the day after new moon in the solar month of puraṭṭāci (September-October). Very occasionally, the Tamil formula may supply the wrong date. In many years, the festival only lasts eight weekdays, as two lunar days may fall within one weekday. (In some parts of India, a Navarātri festival is celebrated in the spring, but that is not discussed here.)